From Typecast?
In terms of sheer masculine beauty, Ben Stiller is an unlikely member of Hollywood’s leading man elite. Although feature for feature he can compete with the best of them, his lopsided expressions and goofy mannerisms set him apart from his more classically dashing peers. Yet the movies he has appeared in, almost 40 in the 20 years since he made his screen debut, have grossed more than $3.4 billion globally. In the past year, according to the Forbes Celebrity 100, Stiller, 41, has earned a tidy $38 million—more than heartthrobs Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and George Clooney.Stiller, of course, specializes in comedy, and his off-kilter features are among his greatest assets. In his best-loved films, he tends to play one of two types: a bumbling nerd who must discover his inner hero (Robert De Niro’s would-be son-in-law in Meet the Parents, the hapless security guard in Night at the Museum) or a manic narcissist whose self-esteem hilariously outstrips his actual talents (the airheaded model in Zoolander, the pumped-up gym owner in DodgeBall). He’s just good-looking enough, and just nebbishy enough, to pull off both kinds of roles.
But his most potent source of cinematic magnetism—and the quality that led People, a few years back, to name him the Sexiest Funnyman Alive—may be the interplay between his hyperactive intelligence and his irrepressible physicality. For fans of his nerd roles (say, the insurance analyst in Along Came Polly, who draws up risk-benefit charts to guide his romance with gorgeous bohemian Jennifer Aniston), half the fun comes from watching the struggle between animal instinct and a neurotically vigilant mind.
That conflict is due for a reprise in The Heartbreak Kid, scheduled for release in October. A remake of the 1972 Neil Simon film, directed this time by the Farrelly brothers, the movie stars Stiller as an indecisive man who marries an obnoxious beauty, only to meet his apparent soul mate on his honeymoon.
In our interview with the actor, we asked whether he identifies with his eternally ambivalent characters. Stiller has always been loath to discuss such matters. “People like to define you through what they’ve seen you do,” he says, his leg fidgeting beneath a conference table on Paramount’s Hollywood lot. “There are aspects of my personality, I guess, that come through on-screen, but I don’t sit around thinking, I’ve been a bumbling suitor all my life.”
John Hamburg, who directed Along Came Polly and cowrote Zoolander and other Stiller projects, describes his colleague both on-screen and off as “a very focused, intense person. His character is driven by obsession.”
The Family Business
But Stiller would rather talk about the intricacies of his craft—the painstaking process of scripting, casting and shooting a funny movie—than analyze his motivations for practicing it. That’s not surprising, given his background. For Stiller, the son of comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, making people laugh is simply the family business.
Growing up in Manhattan, Ben and his older sister, Amy, saw their parents onstage as often as at the dinner table. A key member of the household was Hazel Hugh, a Jamaican nanny who had seven children of her own. “She gave us so much,” says Stiller, who is still in close touch, “when I think back on how she had to sacrifice, taking care of her big family as well as us. She’s 80 now and a beautiful person, inside and out.”
His parents’ comedy act, Stiller and Meara, was a staple on The Ed Sullivan Show; the couple did summer stock, played Vegas, rode the nightclub circuit from coast to coast. The kids tagged along whenever possible, sometimes catching their folks’ act from front-row seats. “I remember wanting the audience to laugh and to like them,” Ben recalls. When the elder Stillers did make it home, the atmosphere was often festive. There were dinner parties with illustrious guests like Francis Ford Coppola and Rodney Dangerfield. And because Dad was Jewish and Mom was raised Irish Catholic (she later converted), there was a double dose of holidays. Says Stiller, “We’d do Christmas and Hanukkah and Thanksgiving and Passover and everything. Easter egg hunts, whatever. Anything that involved food or toys.”
While his father was influenced by vaudeville comedians like Eddie Cantor, Stiller’s mother brought a different approach to funny. “The Irish have a great sense of humor,” Stiller says, “that black, dark sense of humor about death. My mom, especially. She dealt with so much when she was a kid, lost a lot of people. She wasn’t a Three Stooges or Abbott and Costello kind of person. She was always more into the people who didn’t push as much.”
Stiller absorbed both of his parents’ traditions, as well as that of the Stooges and their brethren. He soaked up contemporary comedy, too, idolizing the casts of Second City Television and Saturday Night Live. He performed Shakespeare for the family and shot his own mini-movies with a Super 8 (recurring plot: A bully picks on our awkward hero, who exacts a clever revenge). At age nine, Stiller made a guest appearance on Kate McShane, his mother’s short-lived CBS series. He graduated from high school, did a nine-month stint at UCLA film school, then headed for Broadway. In 1987 he scored his first film role, a walk-on in Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun. The following year, SNL aired one of Stiller’s home movies, a ten-minute parody of The Color of Money, involving bowling hustlers instead of pool sharks. By 1990 he was hosting The Ben Stiller Show on MTV.
Learning to Relax
Stiller went on to direct the Gen-X cult film Reality Bites and the Jim Carrey bomb The Cable Guy. He also played the lead in such dramas as Permanent Midnight and Your Friends & Neighbors. But it was his performance in the Farrelly brothers’ 1998 There’s Something About Mary, about a depressed but good-hearted loser who woos and wins his high school crush—played by a delectable Cameron Diaz—that made him a star. It established a persona he’s still mining nearly a decade later.
“What I like is that Ben keeps it grounded: less pratfalls and more insecurities,” says actor Owen Wilson, who has appeared alongside Stiller in eight films. “Sometimes we get on these laughing jags where it’s hard to keep a straight face, but when I’m around Ben in real life, he’s not cracking jokes left and right. His humor comes out of real life.”
These days, Stiller often works with both of his parents. In Zoolander, his father, playing a smarmy agent past his prime, is a hoot, tossing out lines like “I’ve got a prostate the size of a honeydew!” “My dad’s hilarious,” Stiller says. “When we’re doing a scene together, I know that he’s going to be the funny guy and I don’t have to worry, which is nice. Less pressure.” Stiller’s mother had a cameo in that movie and in Night at the Museum.
And the family enterprise continues to expand. Stiller’s wife, actress Christine Taylor, played his love interest in Zoolander and his antagonist (a lawyer who helps block his scheme to drive a rival gym out of business) in DodgeBall. “She’s awesome,” Stiller says, “and a lot funnier than she lets on.”
The couple’s two children, Ella, five, and Quinlin, two, seem to have inherited the showbiz gene as well. “Ella has a director’s personality,” according to her dad. “When she’s playing, she has a great imagination, and she likes to tell you what she wants you to be. She likes to get a laugh too.” As for Quinn: “He does everything Ella does.”
Finding time to kick back with the kids can be tough for Stiller, who’s busier than ever. His next gig will take him to Hawaii, where he’s directing, producing and costarring in Tropic Thunder—a satire of big-budget war films (with Owen Wilson, Jack Black, Robert Downey, Jr., and Mos Def) that’s due next summer. He’s also in the throes of producing The Ruins, a thriller based on Scott Smith’s bestseller about a group of vacationers who find horror in a Mexican jungle. Then there’s The Hardy Men, a comedy based on the Hardy Boys books, in which he and old pal Tom Cruise—their friendship dates back to an impression Stiller did of the actor in the early ’90s—will play sibling sleuths. “Tom has such an iconic persona,” Stiller says, “and has a good sense of humor about that too.”
It may be harder for Stiller to laugh at himself: He can be as tightly wound as many of his protagonists. Yet, like them, he’s trying to learn to relax. “When I didn’t have a family, I was much more of a workaholic,” he says. “I still like to work, but I also want to be home with them. As you get older, you realize you need balance. If it’s not fun, what’s the point?”